How To Stay In Touch With Friends

Josh Felgoise (00:00.206)

Welcome to Guy's Set, the guy's guide to what you should be talking about. I'm Josh, I'm 23 years old, and I'm here to find all the tips, advice, and recommendations for guys in their 20s. Let's get into it.

Josh Felgoise (00:17.912)

Hi guys, welcome back to guys set the guys guide to what should be talked about. Today's episode is all about staying in touch or keeping in touch with your friends, which is something I think a lot of people struggle with. And this is one of the things that somebody reached out about in one of the guys set toolkit episodes. And I said, I would do a full episode on cause I wanted to give more time and thought to it because it's something that I struggle with. It's something that a lot of guys struggle with.

just staying in touch with friends and kind of keeping in constant contact. It's something that's really hard. And I've found that it's really easy to fall out of touch with friends, especially after college. We kind of go from living on top of each other in college, not literally on top of each other, but like we're next door to all of our best friends. We're seeing them every single night at parties, in class, on the streets. Like we're off of the streets in college, but we're seeing each other like literally all the time.

And then we go from after college to moving to a new apartment, moving back home, starting a new job, moving cities, moving to different places in the country. Like we're just all so separated and you go from, it's just a huge shift from on top of each other to completely separate. And it's not that easy. Actually, it's pretty hard. And one of the hardest parts about it is staying in touch or keeping in touch with your friends. So.

If you are one of those people that struggles with staying in touch with friends, well, my friend, this episode is literally for you. And I've noticed that it becomes even harder to stay in touch with friends over time because you're kind of like, you know what? I'll call them later or I'll see them soon or I'll text them later. And then later becomes a few days and then a few weeks and then a few months. And now it's twenty twenty four and it's been a year since you've talked to that person, to those people.

And it just gets really hard. I mean, I don't blame you for this and like also don't blame yourself or don't fault yourself for not staying in touch with people or not being good at staying in touch. Like I don't think anybody would ever fault you for that. And it's a very hard thing. And a of people struggle with this. So instead of blaming yourself for being like, fuck, like I'm really bad at staying in touch and I wish I was better about it. Start now. Start today. Start this week. And I've got some tips for you in in order to fix this and in order to get better at this and make this a priority for you. So I wanted to do a full episode on this because I feel like

Josh Felgoise (02:37.4)

girls are stereotypically much better about staying in touch with friends. And maybe that's wrong. Maybe that's a bad hot take, but I just feel like that. I feel like a lot of girls usually will be like, hey, like we should grab lunch or we should go get a coffee or go on a walk. And guys don't do that or guys don't make that a priority for each other and for their friends. But like it's similar to skincare, right? Like girls stereotypically have a much better skincare than guys. And we also have skin. Like, why don't we prioritize that?

We also have friends, like why don't we make them a priority if we want to stay in touch and keep in touch, especially after college and especially with transitions in our lives and when we change jobs and when we move to a new city and we and all these things come up and we start dating new people and more and more things get in the way and staying in touch becomes harder and harder. So why don't we make this a priority? And my goal here for this episode is to give you a couple tips of advice or things you can do to start making this a priority again. And for me, I

I really prioritize staying touch with friends. I always have since I've been young and like maybe that's weird, but I really like to keep my friends close, enemies closer obviously, but I really like to keep my friends close and know what they're up to and keep up with their lives. And I've done that through texting and calls and FaceTime and making plans. And I've been really good about it, but I've noticed like more and more recently as I just changed jobs. If you've been following, I talk about that a lot. So now I have those coworkers I want to keep up with. I have

Some college friends I want to keep up with. have high school friends I want to keep up with. have friends from other parts of my life that I want keep up with. And I'm so lucky to have all these friends that I want to stay in touch with and keep in just like keeping my life. But it gets harder and harder with the more people you start to know. And then you start going on dates and meeting new people. And it gets even harder and harder because then there's new people in your life. So with more and more people, it gets harder and harder. And now I'm I'm droning on about it. And that's why that's my new year's resolution for this podcast is to stop doing that. But that's that's the take. That's my take. And that's my personal

reason behind this. So here are three ways to stay in touch and make keeping in touch with people a priority for your life. The first one is to become a good texter. Now, I don't think there is such a thing as being a bad texter. There is in fact a thing as not going on your phone a lot or looking at a text and then completely forgetting about it. Like I do that all the time where I will see a text and be like, I'll get back to that. And then just completely forget about it. Like that's one of the things that

Josh Felgoise (05:02.35)

It's like one of my worst qualities is I'm pretty forgetful sometimes and it's very easy to do that with texts and be like, Oh, I'll, get back to that. So one of the best ways about, you're, if you're in that boat of being forgetful, there's a new feature on the iPhone. If you have an iPhone, I'm assuming you have an iPhone. If you have an Android, like, what are you doing? Like get an iPhone. It's like sliced bread. Like I don't know what to tell you, but there's a new feature on iOS that, uh, iPhone hasn't promoted this, but Apple is not promoting me by the way. I just really like this feature that you can.

Click on red like in slack or another. If you have, if you know what slack is, it's like a thing. A lot of companies use, you can, it's like an unread feature. So instead of totally forgetting about it, you can just be like, let me get back to this later and click on red or I don't know what it's actually called, but you can, you can use an unread fee. Like I haven't read this. What's the feature fucking feature. Hold on. Let me just look because I want to get the right terminology down. you can click Mark as red or Mark is unread. So instead of forgetting, just market it as unread and get back to it.

So that's the first tip if you're forgetful. That's not one of the big three, the big three of tips of this episode, but that's just an extra thing I've just thought about right now. So there's really no such thing as a bad texter. Like we're all pretty chronically on our phones. And if you're not like that's okay too, the next couple of tips are going to help you. But if you're chronic on your phone, like me or like any other, anybody else, get good at texting and kind of make it a priority for yourself to respond to people that are reaching out.

So what I mean by when I say get good at texting is to make it a priority to reach out to one or two people like every other day or every week. And again, the reason I say one or two people every other day or every week is because I don't want you to set such a high bar for yourself that it's like reach out to one person every single day and ask them how they're doing. No, because that's not that attainable all the time. Sometimes you're going to forget or sometimes you're busy and things come up.

But if you want to start getting in touch with people and keeping in touch, reach out to one or two people every other day. I think that's a pretty solid goal to set for yourself. And I talked about this my New Year's resolutions and I talked about like not setting the bar so high for yourself that you're going to feel like a failure if you don't meet that. And I do stand by that. Like I truly do believe and I don't mean this by saying like set low goals for yourself. I think you should really be ambitious and set really high goals for yourself. But when you want to do a lot of things and this is something you want to incorporate back into your life and you want to work on staying in touch with people.

Josh Felgoise (07:24.204)

That's hard. And when you go from zero to a hundred of like me, like texts, someone every single day, you're not going to do that. So set a standard for yourself that you're going to reach out to one or two people every other day and ask them like, and when I say reach out, I mean like say, Hey, how you doing? What's up? Like, how's the job? How's life? Like, you don't have to be like, hello, like hope you're doing well. Like this isn't an email. These are your friends. You don't have to be weird about it, but making a priority to reach out to someone you haven't reached out to, or even just like a friend, close friend, just, just keep checking in and.

kind of get that, get the ball rolling. I'm sorry, I'm using a work term, but get like, get your mindset there. And then once you're happy with that or comfortable with like that cadence of reaching out, then you can start doing it more. And if you don't like it, then don't do it. Like that's fine too. But if you do like it, then you get more comfortable in a groove of texting and following up and continuing the conversation. And in these conversations, you don't have to go on for so long, but just be like, Hey, how's the job? And then, or like, Hey, how you doing? And then text like for like,

a minutes, a couple seconds, a couple texts. You don't have to keep the conversation going for so long. But to be like, like, I've to get back to my, got to get back to this project. Like I'll talk to you soon or like talk to you later. I'll text you later. But the fact that you've already reached out to that one person and made that connection and made that effort just kind of starts like registering in your brain and in your mindset that you're going to keep doing this more. If that makes sense. I don't know if it does. Those words kind of came out in a string and I don't know if they made any sense. But if that did make sense, try this.

Like start today, start tomorrow. you're listening to this when the day comes out of the day, whenever you're listening to this, text one person you're thinking about right now when you're listening to this. Wait, stop for second. Who are you thinking about in your head right now? I'm giving a pause for dramatic effect. Text that person. Don't pause the episode because like don't leave me, but text that person now. You can listen to them. You can do it over me. I'll talk for random. I'll just say random things right now so that you won't miss anything important.

I can just kind of blabble on for a little longer while you shoot that text. Hey, how are you? What's up? How you doing? How you doing? what's up buddy? No, don't people don't like buddy. don't say chief. don't say comrade. Let's talk about that for a second. I feel like people don't like when other people call you buddy. I, I find buddy endearing. And when I say it, I mean it endearingly, but a lot of people take it as like,

Josh Felgoise (09:49.398)

It's like, you think you're better than me for calling me buddy? fuck that. think, I think buddy is an endearing term. Like, all right, I'll see you later, buddy. I don't know. I think I take it as endearing, but, I think I've now babbled on sufficiently enough. And by this time you should have shout out that text. And if you haven't, that's okay. Like if you don't want to reach out to anybody, that's cool too. and you can do it later or you can follow the next tip, which is what a good transition. The next tip is called seven minute calls. And I read an article somewhere.

probably in one of those big newspapers about seven minute calls. I don't know. I don't think they said seven minutes. Maybe they said 10, maybe they said 15, but I like the idea of seven because it doesn't feel so overwhelming. So when you haven't talked to somebody in a while and you're trying to reconnect or get back in touch with that person, it can feel extremely overwhelming and daunting to have to catch up with that person, especially if you haven't talked to them in like a month or two and you have a lot to catch up on. Like your lives have

changed a lot and if they haven't changed, like it's still daunting to have to catch up with somebody that you haven't talked to in a while. So what seven minute calls is, is, is, seven minute calls are taking seven minutes of your day and calling that person and like setting that seven minute standard. You don't have to set the seven minute standard if you have, if the call is going great and you want to talk for longer. Awesome. But if it's not, or if even if it, even if it is, and you want to just like end it there, let me go back.

The reason it's seven minutes is because it feels less daunting to have to call somebody for seven minutes versus have to catch up with them and like set aside 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, and like have a long call and a long chat that you're going to feel drained after. The reason it's seven minutes is because that feels attainable and accessible. So set seven minutes aside and you can do this when you're walking to work, when you're on your way to work, on your way home from work, in the car.

on a walk to get a coffee. A lot of people work from home on Mondays and Fridays. You can do it then anytime you're free on the way to a grocery store in the grocery store while you're making dinner, while you're making lunch, when making breakfast, any meal works, snack, snack time works. Folding your clothes. I always do this. I always call friends when I'm folding clothes or folding laundry or doing laundry. Doing like menial tasks that

Josh Felgoise (12:09.57)

don't take a lot of brain power like folding something or cleaning up the apartment, like call someone, put your headphones in and just chat while you're doing that. Take makes the time go faster and gets you this call in. So it can be longer. It can be shorter, but this gives you a way that once you hit seven minutes, you can be like, should I have to run? Like this was so good catching up with you. Let's talk soon. Like this was really great. And it doesn't feel like you have such a daunting task catching up. You can talk to them soon. You can.

Like seven minutes is a good time because you can actually get a normal person conversation and actually get updates of their life in that seven minutes without it's not like two minutes. not five minutes where you don't feel like you have enough time. Um, but try this, try this tomorrow. Try this today. Call somebody. You haven't talked to in a while. Call somebody who have talked in a while. Just give somebody a call. Uh, that would be helpful for staying in touch and keeping, keeping in touch with friends. Oh, and this, and this one also works for FaceTiming like

You can put your phone down while you're folding clothes and just face on the person and see them. I really like FaceTiming because I feel like first of all, I feel like texting. It's really hard to read tone over and you can't really get like how the person's really doing over text. Calling I think works the same as FaceTiming, but I just like FaceTiming for some reason. And if that's you too, like FaceTime the person that's great too. But like the seven minute thing, I think give that a try. And if you like that, great. If you don't. OK, cool. At the end of the day, these are just suggestions. You can take them or leave them.

But I think they're good tips for helping you to communicate. next one is, oh, also, also, obviously don't abruptly end the call when it hits seven minutes. Like if it goes to like seven minutes and 30 seconds or it's seven minutes and 50 seconds or eight minutes and two seconds, it's okay. You don't have to be like, oh, seven minutes are up. Got to go. Like it's not a timer. Just, just that gives you like a way in your head to be like, okay, now seven minutes have gone by.

I want to get to the rest of my day. I've now sufficiently caught up with this person and made it less daunting to now do this and I feel like can do it more. So end the call whenever you want from there. Don't abruptly be like, this is your seven minute timer. Fuck you. Goodbye. Don't don't don't be don't be like that. OK. The next tip and the third and final tip for this episode is if you're in the same city or proximity as somebody

Josh Felgoise (14:29.184)

make it a priority to make plans with somebody, one person every two weeks. And the reason this isn't every week is because again, that feels overwhelming to have to have a plan every single week. And once a month maybe feels too far apart. So I'm saying every two weeks, I think is really good to try and catch up with somebody and set a time. And this doesn't have to be anything big, but set a time with somebody to go get a coffee or go on a walk or go get make plans for dinner, make plans for lunch.

Good times for this. feel like our Saturday afternoon Sunday afternoon a weeknight During work you can catch up and like meet up for dinner you during the week You can shit talk your work and complain about work together if it's been a long day great time to do that Go get drinks if you don't drink go get whatever go get a matcha latte like you go do anything you want to do Even better. You can just go for a walk together like be like, hey, do you want it?

walk Sunday. Like I would love to catch up. can grab a coffee if you want, but like, we could also just like take a walk and like catch up. but try and make that a priority, like once every two weeks with somebody. that's another great way. Human connection obviously is the, mean, seeing somebody face to face is obviously the best way to catch up, but this only works if you're in the same city or like a close proximity to that person. So if you're not in the same proximity or city, this tip also works for the FaceTime one. So swap out talking in person.

with FaceTime, if to call somebody for 20 minutes like you would on a walk instead of seven minutes, like make it a bigger catch up because you want to take the time to catch up with that person. But yeah, as our jobs and our lives and shit gets crazier and we get farther apart and we make new friends and we get more overwhelmed with the stuff we have to do. And it just gets so much easier in life to be like, I'll call them later or I'll talk to them soon. And then soon becomes

really long away and we and then soon becomes not soon and you know what I mean by that and if you're in this boat use one of these tips this week today I think these are really helpful I'm gonna start using these tips I've been doing these for the past couple weeks and I think it's been great as ways to catch up with friends I think it's also a really great time to start doing these it's the new year and like new year new me shit like

Josh Felgoise (16:51.658)

Make this one of your New Year's resolutions. It's still early in the new year. You don't have to. They didn't have to start on January 1st. You can start today with this type of thing. But take one of these with you after listening to this podcast. I feel like one of these tips will work for mostly everybody listening to this podcast. And if they don't, I'm sorry. And I wish they did. But I really do think one of these tips will work for you and you'll you'll appreciate these. And these would be helpful to.

implement and start catching up with people and keeping connections. But staying in touch is really fucking hard and don't put too much pressure on yourself to do it. And if you haven't been doing it in a while and you feel like you're you've fallen out completely, that's fine. Use this time and use this podcast as a starting point. OK, thank you so much for listening today. I have so much exciting stuff on the horizon of this for this podcast. I've got some really exciting interviews coming up. I've got some really good

solo episodes like this. I'm going to try to do a lot of these episodes in a shorter format, similar to this, where it's like 15 to 20 minutes of a couple tips that you can start doing and a couple helpful tips, hopefully a couple things that will hopefully add value to your day, to your life, to your new year. But I hope you like this episode. And if you did, please like, subscribe, follow the podcast, give it five stars. Please leave a positive review wherever you're listening.

send any advice, any, anything you want to talk about anything that should be talked about to my email, Josh, j o s h at guyset.com, G U I S E T.com, or DM me at the guy set T H E G U I S E T on Instagram, Tik TOK or my website guyset.com. There's a little submission form. You can put something there. Also send me any topics or things you want me to talk about on this podcast. Similar to this. This was, this came from somebody's idea. somebody reached out and was like, Hey, can you talk about keeping up and keeping in touch with friends or staying in touch?

So that's where this episode came from. This came from you guys. So send in anything you guys want me to talk about and I will. Like this is an episode that you, somebody out there, somebody who's listening right now, hopefully, created. So send really anything and I will talk about it and I'll format it and like make tips like this throughout the week and then make it. Okay. I'm really excited for this year. I really like this new format that I'm starting to do that are just kind of shorter form episodes. Now that I'm rambling, it's gonna be a longer form episode. But.

Josh Felgoise (19:12.558)

I'm so excited for the year and I hope you are too. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you guys next week. See you guys. no, fuck. It's soon. you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. See you guys.